Cloning in Global Perspective

The United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies recently published a report on human cloning offering the international community two choices: either prepare for the legal and ethical issues associated with living, cloned humans, or prohibit human reproductive cloning. The report suggests an opinio juris for a prohibition on human reproductive cloning; there is multinational opposition to human reproductive cloning, and more than fifty nations forbide the practice.

Therapeutic cloning techniques generate human embryos through somatic cell nuclear transfer to harvest embryonic stem cells. Reproductive cloning techniques seek to create humans with nuclear DNA identical to a currently or previously existing human.

Brendan Tobin, a human rights lawyer and co-author of the report explains:

Failure to outlaw reproductive cloning means it is just a matter of time until cloned individuals share the planet…If failure to compromise continues, the world community must accept responsibility and ensure that any cloned individual receives full human rights protection.

The report cautions that without an international prohibition, researchers could practice reproductive cloning in nations without a regulatory framework.

Reflecting on the history of UN efforts to ban cloning, the report highlights the best of possible solutions as outlawing human reproductive cloning and permitting therapeutic cloning. The report comes after a lengthy UN debate beginning shortly after the 1997 adoption of the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, In 2004, the Bush administration pushed for a global treaty banning both reproductive and therapeutic cloning, which failed by one vote to pass the General Assembly. The administration settled in 2005 on the UN Declaration on Human Cloning (A/RES/59/280), a non-binding statement against both reproductive and therapeutic cloning. The success of the declaration largely hinged on it being non-binding, allowing nations to use therapeutic cloning for research without consequence.

In the United States, congressional action paralleled U.S. advocacy for a global ban. The House of Representatives twice voted in favor of criminalization of research on human cloning in 2001 and 2003 (H.R. 2505, H.R. 534), but these bills failed both times in the Senate (S. 245, S. 658). In 2002, the President’s Council on Bioethics voted 10-7 in favor of a moratorium of therapeutic cloning and unanimously for a prohibition of human reproductive cloning.

As is the case for stem cell research policies, a current patchwork of state policies exist regulating cloning, where not overarching federal framework guides. Most states prohibit reproductive cloning and the majority allowing therapeutic cloning foreruns the U.S. stem cell research efforts.

Tags: medicine

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